Over the past two decades, passing arguments by reference has come a long way in C#. With modern versions of the language, we not only have "ref" and "out" at our disposal but also "in", "scoped ref" and "ref readonly". But wait, there's more! ByRef returns, local by-reference variables, and ref structs with ref fields.
All these variations of references are used more and more in the Base Class Library and NuGet packages from the .NET ecosystem, for example, by the mighty type "Span" and its related memory APIs. It's high time to learn the differences and applications of all of these keywords to unlock correctness and high-performance for our .NET apps and libraries.
Stefan's passion is to practice Clean Code and test-driven development in order to build maintainable software in an ever-evolving team, supported by tools from the .NET Ecosystem. He loves to attend and speak at public developer events, co-organize local community gatherings, stream live programming sessions, and author open source projects, complementing his expertise in professional software development. As Microsoft MVP (Developer Technologies), JetBrains Community Contributor (.NET) and co-organizer of DotNetDevs.at, it's his ambition to share knowledge about everything C#.
